Sunday, 28 November 2010

Alison Dupernex is currently showing at the Innov8 Craft Fair in Pershore. She gave a talk to the local artis's group WANA yesterday.

http://www.alisondupernex.co.uk

Alison gave a lively talk about the origin, development and techniques for knitting her silk and cashmere cardigans and scarves.

She described herself as ‘Painting with yarn’, and said that she was

passionate about colours...they absolutely bounce off each other.... your life gets richer because of what you discover...touching and feeling the fabric nourishes your soul...makes you feel fantastic.

Many artists have influenced her in the twenty five years she has been a professional knitter.She designs in January and February, closing the workroom door and experimenting.During the rest of the year she doesn’t have time to develop ideas, but she does alter her colour choices all the time as she goes along.She always makes her colour choices in daylight.She finds that black and white, which she only started using recently, give space to other colours and allow them to breath.Sometimes she uses colours which you are unlikely to notice in a composition but if they weren’t there you would notice that they weren’t there...somehow they make the garment zing.

Alison trained as an English teacher. In the eighties she had fifteen knitters working for her, and sold in stores around the world such as Liberty's.Knitting and knitted garments then became unfashionable, and it was only a chance discovery of some Italian silk yarn that transformed her work into its current fluid, flexible form.Garments are square cut but draping, gaining their shape from the people who wear them.The light airy stripes of knitted silk are interspersed with slightly felted cashmere to give an intricate and sumptuous texture.

Wednesday, 24 November 2010

The Wednesday Group, my pals from the machine embroidery City & Guild's course at Malvern, are making a postcard sized work each month, This month the topic is 'Christmas'.

It is a lovely frosty day outside, and a good day to start a new project.

I haven't sewn anything much for ages and so I wanted an easy project to start with. I began with needing to find a long extension lead, as the whole electrical circuit in the room I sew in have stopped working. We suspect that mice have chewed through a cable but we haven't yet figured out where.

I decided to take the 'All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth' song as my inspiration. I considered which materials to use for each layer, but decided to try felt as I had sufficient and its lack of fraying was attractive.

I got together materials, then tried to thread my sewing machine. After a few goes I triumphantly got the needle threaded, only to realise that I had threaded the bobbin thread through the eye of the needle. Hey Ho...

I wrote the postcard to Santa saying what I wanted. I had decided not to make any 'cutesy' spelling errors but spelled 'Dear' wrong without meaning to. I had put out a note from a then six year old friend of mine to get the feeling of the writing, and it obviously worked.

I stitched ribbon to red felt for the wrapping, organised so that undoing the bow allowed access to the inside of the present.

The inside is lined with violet/blue velvet. Sewn onto the velvet are two incisors, complete with root. I made them out of white and flesh coloured ribbon. I would have liked to make teeth that were more beautifully crafted, especially after seeing Annie's exquisite apples with pips last week, but couldn't manage that. I think they do, at least, look like teeth enough for the story to work. I had hoped they would seem like jewels set in a box.

So, not great, and I had to relearn things like changing machine feet and tensions and threads...but at least it is done.

I've been preoccupied with trying to set up and run a gluten-free bakery business. I haven't done anything else except learn about food hygiene, legislation, packaging, and baking baking baking as I test recipes for quality, keeping and transportation.

I have decided it is time I got back to a more balance life and managed to make it to the monthly 'Wednesday Group', the people I originally went to machine embroidery classes with at Malvern. They, sorry, we, are making a postcard sized piece each month, and this month I am going to join in. The topic is Christmas, and I have planned my piece. Today I will make it. I'll post the process and pics as they emerge.

Thursday, 18 November 2010

After months of not doing any embroidery I finally managed to make it to the Wednesday Group meeting - the original gang I met at my first City & Guilds class two years ago. They have been making a small postcard sized work each month, with next one being Christmas. The themes each time have been simple, but they are still producing very different work in response to the title - I look forward especially to February's, which in a fit of lack of inspiration became 'the letter F'.

So, got to clear the workspace and begin again. I'll check the earlier blogs and make sure I finished posting about the work I did for the C&G level 3 and the exhibition. I decided my life had become lopsided and I needed to do something other than cook.